| Watching a Teenage Girl Die by Mortar The New York Times
09/09/2010
By Eirini Vourloumis
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Adam Ferguson believes that facing difficult moments honestly — without emotionally separating himself from the situation at hand — yields more engaging photographs.
Easy to say? He covers war.
“The moment I become unaffected or unable to feel,” Mr. Ferguson said, “it would be time to go and do something else with my life. The war would have got me.”
On July 28, on assignment for Time magazine in Afghanistan, Mr. Ferguson witnessed the death of a teenage girl in a Marine mortar strike. (“Tragedy in Marjah, Witness to a Civilian Casualty,” Time Video.) The conflicts that posed were tremendous.
“I am eating, sleeping, patrolling and getting shot at with these young guys,” he said. “They grab me and pull me into a ditch when we are under fire. Then we joke and talk about our families and girlfriends, and what we are going to do with our lives when we get out.”
“Then all of a sudden I am recording an event that makes these guys look bad,” he continued. “You have a sense of loyalty to them, and you have to reconcile that in relation to your integrity as a journalist.
“As much as it is my job to engage emotionally, it’s also my job to record history, so I can’t break down and cry,” he said. “I have to work and contain my tears. And the more one holds on to their tears, the harder they become to let go.”
Mr. Ferguson, 32, grew up in Australia. Today, he is a member of VII Network and photographs for The New York Times and Time in Afghanistan.
He began his career in Southeast Asia but found himself inspired by images of wars in Vietnam, Bosnia and Africa.
“I wanted to follow in the tradition of the great conflict photographers,” Mr. Ferguson said. “There is, of course, an element of ego. I won’t hide in a guise of nobility. I was curious and wanted to experience these conflicts firsthand. I wanted to see if I could handle it mentally, and of course survive.”
In Wardak Province, he focused on making an intimate portrait of troops, regardless of what they were doing. “I simply wanted to show the war for what it was at the furthest point from the military flagpole,” he said. “I found a sense of confusion and boredom amidst the conflict. And I believe — I hope — I captured that.”
Mr. Ferguson won the World Press Photo first prize for spot news singles this year. He believes that working in Afghanistan has made him mature faster as a photographer. Much of his guidance — and emotional support — has come from Gary Knight, one of his colleagues at VII.
“I have experienced many of the same things he has, so he seems to feel he can talk to me about things that the other people in his life may not be able to comprehend as easily,” Mr. Knight said. “I think he is perhaps less in a hurry for success than most people, so he feels less pressure from within. That may be why he found it so fast.”
Mr. Ferguson plans on being around when the last American helicopters lift off from Afghanistan. Then he’d like to return to Australia to focus on personal stories, which he hopes will restore him physically and mentally.
“Even though war is tragic,” he said, “it is inherently exciting. Normal life can be banal. After war, engaging with stories that require you to rekindle yourself emotionally, stories that make you laugh and cry, is — I believe — important to maintaining a balance.”
And he has some counsel for those who imagine themselves photographing combat and conflict: “Think hard before falling down the rabbit hole.”
“As a young photographer,” he said, “it’s easy to be filled with ambition and naively forget that what you experience stays with you. If you go to war, it will change you. And it wouldn’t be normal if it didn’t.”
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